When I graduated undergrad way back when, I put a big chunk down to buy a lifetime alumni membership because it gave me access to all of UC's libraries. I have not been active in alumni networks. But as I try to pivot in today's environment, I went looking for their career resources.

It's more #NeoliberalHellhole

When I was an undergrad in the mid - late 1980s, there were human employees in the career center, and cards posted to the wall with internal and external jobs & internships with details on pay & benefits. Each had been called into the career center by a human being.

Now both of my UC alma maters use Handshake. And the undergrad alum assoc charges a hefty monthly fee on top of your membership to have access to Handshake - your only choice. So many of the things our public university chose to use are third party for-profit data-scraping horrors. Now with added "AI"!

The public have been failed over & over by neoliberals and attacked by right wingers. Nickle & Dime University

Things that should shock people, but don't seem to: UC Davis is urging its underpaid grad students and adjuncts, among others, to donate to a food drive to support UC Davis staff & retirees who are food insecure.

Of course, UC could have prevented things like this by hiring real educators from within instead of chasing CEO-types to be chancellors, and downsizing overpaid management and not super-sizing UCPD, but instead we have a #NeoliberalHellhole

https://hr.ucdavis.edu/events/uc-davis-staff-retiree-food-drive #USpol

UC campuses used to have actual career centers with qualified human employees.

Now UC Davis uses Handshake for everything, even internal positions.

I just got an email from the "Handshake Matchmaker" saying it had the perfect position for me - a mobile swim instructor.

#NeoliberalHellhole

"According to Moak, the administrative decisions relating to the GLN stem from “catastrophic” budget cuts which have resulted in language departments across UCSB needing to lay off faculty and replace them with “computer programs or robots.” "

https://dailynexus.com/2026-04-02/ucsb-contends-with-proposed-systemwide-shift-to-online-language-courses/ #SantaBarbara #HigherEd #NeoliberalHellhole

I do believe that someone at UC Davis just blocked me from seeing the seminar Zoom. My display name said "UC Access Now" because I used to pay for UC Access Now's acct and that's what Zoom defaults to. I gather someone saw that and thought, "Not that uppity disabled person" and blocked me.

So just as it was when I was a grad student there, I don't have access. #Ableism #NeoliberalHellhole #PlantScience

Public paid for the research:

"This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (HD094623, HD059205, MH084164) and National Science Foundation (DRL-2024856) to V.M. and Stanford Maternal & Child Health Research Institute Postdoctoral Support Award to H.C. and P.M."

And the journal it's published in has a box on the front page thanking reviewers for working for free.

Yet it's behind a paywall.

https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2026/01/30/JNEUROSCI.2385-24.2025

#AcademicChatter #Science #NeoliberalHellhole

UC Davis Library Resources Cancelled Due to Budget Cuts

https://library.ucdavis.edu/leadership-mission-and-strategy/budget/resources-cancelled/ #NeoliberalHellhole

Hey, the UC President who didn't respond to or credit UC Access Now (while coopting a few things we pushed for), who enabled right-wing types by appeasing them on UC campuses and not taking a strong stand against them is getting something named after him, and it's not a teeter-totter.

This ophthalmologist presided over a UC that wasn't even highest common denominator for those with vision disabilities, much less other kinds...

https://chancellor.ucsf.edu/news/recognizing-uc-president-emeritus-michael-drake #Ableism #NeoliberalHellhole

It was already bad enough that University of California was using Box to post what should be publicly available documents instead of using publicly-owned servers, but this?

Who "ideated" this?

#NeoliberalHellhole #California #FuckAI